Importance of Customer Satisfaction and Relationship Management
Discuss about the Improvement of Customer Service Satisfaction.
The term customer satisfaction is a term that is used to identify how well the products or services are meeting the requirement of the customers. The customer satisfaction is an important part of marketing that involves meeting the customer’s requirement and provides the business organization a metric to measure the production acceptance in the market. This gives the owners or producers an idea to produce what type of products and service they should provide to increase their sale in the market (Orel and Kara 2014). The companies should make sure that they are providing their best service to the customers so that they are maintaining their reputation in the market. The companies should make sure that they are creating a special team that will take care of the surveys that gives a clear result about the customer satisfaction part, as this plays a vital role in the customer relationship management. There are few measures that every organization must consider while maintaining the customer satisfaction strategy in the organization:
- Treating the customer like the boss
- Focusing on measuring customer satisfaction
- Building customer loyalty to increase customer satisfaction
- Avoiding customer retention
- Meeting customers expectancy every time
Customer value is the benefit that the customer get from purchasing the product and getting the services from the company and customer satisfaction is the amount of satisfaction that they are getting from the services. The primary motive of customer satisfaction is to keep the customer bind with the company si that they remain loyal to the brand and get attracted to this brand like every time (Kuo et al. 2013). The company must make sure that they are using this strategy every time to maintain the bond with the in a regular basis.
In order to conduct the assignment the industry that has been chosen is that of food and beverage industry focusing on the Australian market. Customers play the most important role in the success of an organisation that operates in the food and beverage industry. For example: a restaurant has to offer good food with quality in order to gain the attention of the target market in the first place. The food, presentation, ambience etc are some of the aspects that are associated with customer satisfaction in a restaurant. The Revenue of the “Food & Beverages” industry in Australia amounts to US$279m in 2018 (Statista.com 2018).
According to (N. Torres and Kline 2013) the problems that lead to a poor CRM in the organization are many. The main reasons that affect the relationship in the organization are gap in the information. The lack in information often leads to misconception and misunderstanding in the organization among the customer and the organization. This creates a lot of confusion thus affecting the relation among the company and customer thus reducing the market value of the company. It is clearly stated that relying on the demographic data or the purchasing record of the customers. The company must acquire proper sale record and history before reaching the customer with their desired target. The companies must understand clearly what the customers are trying to say. The companies are often using out dated information that might create more scope for misunderstanding and misconducting. The data are mostly unverified that can cause more confusion. This was stated by (Abd-El-Salam, Shawky and El-Nahas 2013) that the poorly designed systems can cause long lag times for data collection. The fragmented data in the organization can misinterpret the message and thus the company might make changes that are not required by the organization and thus the entire effort is useless without the usage of proper data. The addition of new communication channels that might lead to inconsistent service. It is essential for an organisation that operates in food and beverage industry to have effective communication in order to understand the dynamics of the industry as well as learn about the needs and requirements of the customers. The continuous change in the environment, political, economic and social factors require the organizations to adapt the changes immediately. The technology advances might be cost reductive but they require a lot of time to be processed (Okumus and Genc 2013). An organisation that operates in the food and beverage industry should have provisions of collecting feedbacks form the customers. This provides opportunities for the company to develop their service in a way that will provide it competitive advantage. With the help of platform and services like Zoho, small and medium companies can effectively use CRM activities in order to find leads and
Strategies for Maintaining Customer Satisfaction
According to Özer, Argan and Argan (2013), the major threat that a company that operates in the food and beverage industry face is the reduction of growth after a certain period of operation. With the help of CRM activities the company can find out option and scope of improvement. On the other hand, Chen and Chang (2013), state that the reputation that is formed after a service for a long period of time is a major asset for the organization. The company should not risk the image of the company by not maintaining a proper relationship with the customers. The advanced technology that the companies are using in the present days are making it easy to uplift the brand name and at the same time they are vulnerable to create a negative impression about the brand. The negative review about the company in the websites can easily damage the reputation of thee company in the market (Chen and Chang 2013). The customer lifetime value is dropped that states that the customers might face issues with the company and might not stay with that brand any further. The customer service determines the scope of customer loyalty with the brand. The companies must make sure that they are using the best strategies to create new customers and maintain the relationship with them. There are high chances that a bad behaviour with a single customer can create a huge risk to the brand image in the market. Thus the companies must make sure that the relation management sector are well organized and managed in an organization (Ding et al. 2014).
The organizations might face a lot of chaos and conflicts that will lead to a market downfall of the organization. It is expected that the proper management system in the organization helps the organization to understand the requirement and make necessary changes that are required. The misunderstanding among the organization and the customer is a huge threat that can a huge negative impact in the organization. In an organisation that operates in the food and beverage industry may not be able to understand the reason for their reduced growth or popularity, in that case it is important to understand the perspective of the customers. An organisation like a restaurant or a grocery store should understand the changing needs of the customers in order to remain relevant. Thus the companies must assure that they are using best strategy to understand the customer demand and requirements in the market. According to Sun and Kim (2013), a lack of understanding and communication with the customers will not inform the company about the reason for their failure or downward graph. The company has to regulate the updates in the market and demand among the product or service user to get a clear idea about the product in the market.
Issues affecting CRM in Organizations
It is an approach to deal with the customer with proper mode of interaction and communication, thus resolving their issues, finding their requirement, meeting their need and maintaining a healthy relation with them. The need of relationship management in organization plays an extremely vital role to maintain the interest of the customer to the business. The management system uses the data to analyse the situation and make necessary changes that attracts the customers to the organization. The CRM approach basically targets to compile the data, analyse them thoroughly and make sure that the data is helping the company to build a better relationship with the customers (Hung, Chen and Huang 2014). There are situation very often when the customers face issues regarding the products and services, however they are unable to share this with anyone in the company. Due to this the customers tend to change the brand and service and opt for another company. This becomes threat to the company when the customer migration takes place in a large scale. This approach helps the business to understand and learn more about the customer behaviour in the market and make changes in their production standard. This concept had started in the year 1970 when the customer satisfaction was analysed from the survey results.
The marketing goal of a restaurant or an ice-cream parlour is to reach the customer in an efficient and desired manner. The marketing goal must be measurable and maintained by the organization to keep up their marketing standard and regulate the relationship with the client s. the marketing goals of the company determines how well the organizations are targeting their success and sale increase. According to Subramanian et al. (2014) few typically marketing objective of organizations can be
- Increase in sales
- Brand awareness
- Launching new products
- Expansion of business
- Targeting new customers
- Entering new and international markets
- Improving the relationship with the stake holders
- Enhancing the relationship with the customer
- Building new strategies that will attract the customers
Thus these objectives are generally used by the companies to in build and maintain the relationship with the customers and enhance the position of the company in the market. The main goal of marketing is to attract or seek attention of the customers and create their interest towards their product and services. With the help of CRM tools companies in the food and beverage industry can easily used social media in order to stay connected to the cusotmers (Hung, Chen and Huang2014). CRM with the advancement of technology has also have developed a mobile feature which enables the management to be in touch with the customers at all times. Feedback from the customers is one of the most important features of such tools. Example of such a tool is Aptean, Zoho etc.
Marketing Goals for Organizations
The marketing function in an organization include market research, identification of issues faced by the customers, making relevant changes, making a marketing plan, checking whether the plan is working or not. If the plan is successful then they will wait for the next survey and if the plan did not succeed then they must recheck the entire process and make sure that they are using the best alternate way.
Following are some of the importance of CRM and understanding customer relations for the companies that operate in the food and beverage industry:
It consist of the historical view and analysis of the required data acquired about the customer.it helps to reduce the stress of searching and correlating the customer needs and also the business needs and helps to bind them together to meet the requirement of the customer ad the organization.
The system consist of all the relevant information about the customer and their requirement that will help them to understand the requirement of the customer. Referring to this information the company can make their necessary changes and improvement in their work culture. The CRM system makes the entire process easy and saves a lot of time. This can also help the company to determine which customer will be profitable to the organization and thus the organization can serve specially to such customers to improve their sale.
This system groups the customers according to their aspects as per the business requirements. This also depends on the physical locations or different requirements, then they are referred to their desired locations under the different customer manager.
The CRM system is not only helpful to maintain the present customer but also create new customers for the organization. The process starts with identifying the customer and maintaining the corresponding details into the CRM system. This is an opportunity for the business.
The CRM system is cost effective and there is very less requirement of paper and direct manual work. The technology used in this system is also very cheap and smooth in comparison to the traditional way of business (Sun and Kim 2013). The details are kept centralized and are available anytime required.
- Missing key information: the information’s are often lacking proper data that might create further risk in the entire work process. The dependency on the information without any further clarification can cause further damage to the organization. The customers get more irritated and disturbed with the improper changes made by the company. The required changes affect the customer in a proper way but if the changes are unwanted then the customers can get distracted to other brands and companies thus risking the condition of the company.
- Incorrect data: the data collected by the survey might not be correct. This can misguide the companies and they might make changes that are irrelevant for the company. The company should make sure that they are using proper data and information they are using are accurate and desirable. The changes made by the company from the wrong information might hamper the reputation of the company and have a negative impact about the brand image in the market.
- Lack of insight: the data that are collected re expected to be accurate and exact however, they provide only the outline of the data. They do not conclude anything for the company. The data that does not have any proper relevance or conclusion must not be trusted. The company should make sure that they are trusting data that is acceptable by the society and benefits the company.
Following are some of the barriers in the process of CRM which can be faced by the organisations in the food and beverage industry.
- Privacy concern: the CRM data are not responsive to the issues of multi -channel marketing in a privacy protected society. The marketers should identify the clients and contact them according to their privacy requirements. The data can often be highly successful for the organization and help to recover areas that could have been a severe threat to the organization. However at times a single wrong information can cause a huge damage to the organization and the relationship between the organization and the customers.
- Lack of knowledge: many small and medium companies that operate in the industry do have knowledge regarding the importance and the available provisions of CRM given today’s technological advances and dynamics of the industry.
The customer satisfaction derives the feedback from the customers experience with the brand product and service. It exponentially increases the value of the customer in the market and captures information about the customers that will help them to build better scope to reach the customers.
Importance of CRM Tools in the Food and Beverage Industry
This part of the study will discuss about the recommendation that can be suggested to the organization that will help them to meet the challenges faced by the organization regarding the CRM. There are few things that might be considered while implementing the CRM in the organization:
Using proven strategies to build customer loyalty: the building of customer loyalty plays a vital role for growing the business. The company can follow the steps to maintain the relation like:
- Update the customer about the latest offers and discount available
- Personalize the relationship with the customer and share information in a personal tone so that the bond becomes more strong
- Wishing them or congratulating them on their special events.
- Sharing data, article, and information that the customer might be interested too. This will build a personal relationship with the customer.
- Being genuine and honest with the customer and maintaining the brand quality and standard with the customer
- Measuring customer’s effort score: this means to motivate the team to learn to resolve issues in a quick, effective and efficient manner. Focusing on how to improve the result that has been extracted from the study conducted to understand the customer behaviour and requirement. The primary key for understanding the business scope with regards to CRM in an organization is the score of the customer effort. It can be said that he less effort a company has to pay to the organization, the higher chances they will have to maintain the bond with the organization. Thus the company should make surer that they are keeping the effort score card of the customer low to increase their score for maintaining good relation with the customer.
- Demonstrating excellent product knowledge: comprehensive product knowledge is an important factor in the present day’s world. The customer are aware of every single product they are using and they are also conducting study to self- serve, figure out the basic facts y themselves. If the customers have escalated about the product the company should make sure that they are helping the customers with full fledge support and information regarding their issue.
- Managing the clients complaints and compliments the business owners should see the opportunities and in every complaints by the customers. They should find better scope to learn and improve themselves from these escalation and complaints. The companies should get a scope to develop strong relationship with clients and enhance the business image in the market. If the company is unable to make the required changes about the issues then they must inform the client on time and ask for clarity. The client handling strategy should be polite and decent so that the customers should not think of changing the company or move to some alternate brands.
- Motivating the customer service team: the company should always motivate the customer service team. The employees who maintains a good relation in the workplace will automatically serve the customers in a better and efficient manner. The workers who are interested in their job life will automatically performing well to serve the clients and resolve their issues easily. The customers will be happy with the on time service and hence the relation with the customers will be maintained. The company must make sure that the customer service teams are always motivated towards their work life and thus they are giving their best performance to the customers.
Conclusion:
Thus it can be concluded from the above discussion that the organisations that operate in the food and beverage industry are impacted severely by the CRM as it is a sector that is directly associated with the customers and are always in touch with them. The customer service relation enhances the building of relation with the customers to personalize the transaction is that even when there are few issues regarding the product or service they can be easily met by the company. The customer service activities help the company to create a bond with the customer so that if they are facing any issue the department or the management can resolve the issue. For example if a customer gets a bad product from the Hunger Jack’s outlet they have the provision of complaint and getting their order replaced this helps in maintaining as well as developing the customer relationships. The study has clearly stated the fact that the customer satisfaction plays a vital role to maintain the reputation of the brand in the market that enhances and support the stability of the company in the market. if the customer satisfaction management team is not well maintained in an organization then the company might face issues regarding the sale, loss in the sale, lack of proper understanding, undesirable product production. Thus the companies must make sure that they are using a proper customer management system in the organization for the betterment of the company.
References:
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